Letter: Understand things as they are

In response to Kevin Wingate's, "Sagan was wrong," I offer another Sagan quote: "First: there are no sacred truths .... Second: whatever is inconsistent with the facts must be discarded or revised. We must understand the cosmos as it is and not confuse how it is with how we wish it to be."

I agree with Sagan. As a librarian and historian, I don't believe everything I read. Historical and religious texts are full of errors, lies and biases. They should be dismissed if they can't be confirmed.

Like creation stories of the world's religions, the Bible's creation story has no basis in fact. Exodus couldn't have happened as described. Mathew, Mark, Luke and John were not eyewitnesses, nor did they write the texts assigned to their names. Only seven of Paul's letters were actually written by Paul, and many passages in the Gospels were later additions. If you don't believe that Elvis walked among us after his death, don't believe the resurrection story either.

Functional magnetic imaging (fMRI) studies have shown that religious experiences are all in the mind, not supernatural at all. Kevin Wingate may wish to believe otherwise, but wishing doesn't make it so. If someone reports they've seen Satan, they've experienced an hallucination, not a visitation.

In "Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark," Sagan wrote, "For me, it is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." He was right.

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